The rule provides that when a court of competent jurisdiction has entered a final judgment on the merits of a cause of action, the parties to the suit and their privies are thereafter bound "not only as to every matter which was offered and received to sustain or defeat the claim or demand, but as to any other admissible matter which might have been offered for that purpose."
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Plaintiff has had a full and fair opportunity to litigate these same claims with respect to GM and Chrysler before Judge Van Artsdalen.
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In fact, "possibly in an overabundance of caution", Judge Van Artsdalen withheld entering summary judgment on plaintiff's antitrust allegations for over six months to allow the plaintiff an additional opportunity to develop and present competent and credible factual evidence in support of his claims. Raitport v. General Motors Corporation, No. 73-2054 at 13 (E.D. Pa., filed May 28, 1975). Only after plaintiff failed to present any such evidence did Judge Van Artsdalen grant defendants' motions for summary judgment. We hold that plaintiff is barred from relitigating these claims, or any claims which he should have raised in that action, against GM and Chrysler in this proceeding. He is bound by the judgment of the earlier case. 1B Moore's Federal Practice para. 0.405.

Although plaintiff has not alleged a violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, inasmuch as this is a pro se complaint, we have considered whether he has stated a cause of action pursuant to this section. 42 U.S.C. § 1983 provides:

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to governmental and not private action. As stated by the Court in District of Columbia v. Carter, 409 U.S. 418, 424-25, 34 L. Ed. 2d 613, 93 S. Ct. 602 (1973):

If two or more persons in any State or Territory conspire to go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another, for the purpose of depriving, either directly or indirectly, any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the laws . . . [and] one or more persons engaged therein do, or cause to be done, any act in furtherance of the object of such conspiracy, whereby another is injured in his person or property, or deprived of having and exercising any right or privilege of a citizen of the United States, the party so injured or deprived may have an action for the recovery of damages, occasioned by such injury or deprivation, against any one or more of the conspirators.

[the] language [in § 1985(3)] requiring intent to deprive of equal protection, or equal privileges and immunities, means that there must be some racial, or perhaps otherwise class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus behind the conspirators' action. The conspiracy, in other words, must aim at a deprivation of the equal enjoyment of rights secured by the law to all.

Although a conspiratorial allegation is presented, plaintiff has not alleged that defendants' actions were generated by some racial or otherwise class-based animus within the meaning of Griffin v. Breckenridge. More importantly, though, plaintiff has not alleged the deprivation of any right, privilege or immunity to which Section 1985(3) affords protection. Neither plaintiff nor any other automotive component "inventor-entrepreneur" has a federally guaranteed right to have his business proposals accepted and financed by private automotive companies. To the contrary, the Supreme Court has long recognized the right of private companies, in the absence of any purpose to create or maintain a monopoly, to freely choose the parties with whom they will deal. United States v. Colgate & Company, 250 U.S. 300, 307, 63 L. Ed. 992, 39 S. Ct. 465 (1919). The claim under Section 1985(3) will therefore be dismissed.

Plaintiff has alleged by affidavit that his business proposal was similarly rejected by both American Motors and Ford. There is nothing to indicate that his parallel business behavior was the product of any agreement, tacit or express, between the defendants to refuse to deal with the plaintiff other than plaintiff's affidavit in which he states his basic theory that the automotive companies are engaged in a conscious conspiracy to prevent new competitors from entering the field of automotive component manufacture and that his proposal was rejected in accordance with this conspiratorial policy. Plaintiff offers no further explanation of the details of this conspiracy other than the assertion that the conspiracy is formulated and executed at the management level by the heads of Ford and American Motors.

In the affidavits submitted on behalf of Ford, the affiants attest that the decision to reject the plaintiff's proposal was made unilaterally by them, and that in making the decision, they did not communicate with any person in the employ of or acting for GM, Chrysler or American Motors, or any other person employed outside Ford, nor did anyone from this group have any communication or discussion with Ford concerning Mr. Raitport or any of his inventions. The affiants further state that the plaintiff's proposals were rejected on the basis of their own business judgment. The affidavits submitted on behalf of American Motors (as do the affidavits submitted on behalf of GM and Chrysler) attest to the same facts.

It is true that the issue of material fact required by Rule 56(c) to be present to entitle a party to proceed to trial is not required to be resolved conclusively in favor of the party asserting its existence; rather, all that is required is that sufficient evidence supporting the claimed factual dispute be shown to require a jury or judge to resolve the parties' differing versions of the truth at trial. The case at hand presents peculiar difficulties because the issue of fact crucial to petitioner's case is also an issue of law, namely the existence of a conspiracy. What Rule 56(e) does make clear is that a party cannot rest on the allegations contained in his complaint in opposition to a properly supported summary judgment motion made against him. Yet the analysis of the facts undertaken above demonstrates that, due to the absence of probative force of Cities' failure to deal with Waldron as being in itself evidence of conspiracy, petitioner's position is, in effect, that he is entitled to rest on the allegations of conspiracy contained in his pleadings. Thus petitioner repeatedly states that Cities has never disproved its participation in the alleged conspiracy, despite the fact that the only evidence of such participation is his allegation that the failure to deal resulted from conspiracy. . . . While we recognize the importance of preserving litigants' rights to a trial on their claims, we are not prepared to extend those rights to the point of requiring that anyone who files an antitrust complaint setting forth a valid cause of action be entitled to a full-dress trial notwithstanding the absence of any significant probative evidence tending to support the complaint. (footnote omitted).

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